Saturday, October 08, 2011

Douchey Cool

It's not particularly unusual for people that I think are pretty damn cool to have a shitty, narcissistic side. Example; Wil Wheaton makes a big deal of some random jagoff being a dick to a friend of his.

Some guy sends a rude email and it turns into a big PR flak for a PR company. This matters only because the person they were rude to gets a lot of hits on their blog. The underlying principle is that the degree of clutching one's pearls is proportional to the worth of the individual somehow being wronged. Famous, or popular people do this because they want the same sort of pearl clutching from other famous people when somebody slights them. It's basically a cool kidz circle jerk.

Seriously.. somebody sent a rude email and now it needs to be announced to the rest of the world how mean that person was, and how they totally underestimated the influence of the important person they called a "fucking bitch". Now they need to be smacked down by the kid that used to navigate the Enterprise.. or some shit.

It happens all the time.. and if Wheaton drones on and on about how awesome somebody is because they happen to have a unique skill that garners attention, I'm going to wish him a punch in the dick.

Then his very next post is entitled "John Green is my hero" because he wrote a book called "what is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable?"

Let's clap for the guy who is making such a profound observation that we all should try to be super popular by doing something "profound", thus getting a lot of hits on our blogs so we can say how awesome each of us are.

It's like the douche has been turned up to 11. <--- hip Spinal Tap reference

For some people, living to see the next day is "remarkable". For others, feeding their kids is remarkable.. or just not murdering someone. Just taking another breath is often good enough.

People do what they can, and not everyone is going to end up with their own entry in wikipedia, or they're not going to broadcast to the intertwebz (another cool phrase) their day to day lives in order to "inspire" people. It's rather condescending to judge the worth and value of a person by whether or not they are "remarkable".

There are people that just have a knack for getting others to pay attention to them. Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) does that.. Andrew Sullivan, wanker extraordinaire (see how I used the word "wanker" there? I'm cool) is a master of that. Certainly some people are gifted in being able to phrase things in a clever way, or of building themselves into a self-sustaining cult of personality. With Wheaton, it becomes hip and trendy to read his blog or his tweets and so people do.

It's not that I think that fame and popularity makes a person a douche by default. It's not that what they have to say isn't entertaining. It's the values that come along with that which become twisted.

And so the logical conclusion.. or question.. is why? It's always about money. And money gets you sex.. which is the most important thing in the world. If you've ever seen a picture of Sullivan's partner, you'd see how that works. He's a big strapping handsome bear of a man that pounds the shit out of Sully on a regular basis, I'm sure. The only reason he's with Sullivan is because of the money. The money only comes from abdicating ones integrity, which is pretty much a pre-requisite for becoming famous, and thus, wealthy.

I know it all sounds rather hypocritical because I have a list of these types of people on my blog links. I generally don't link to random and not-famous people. The reason is because it's a lot easier to find more famous people that are entertaining than it is to find interesting and entertaining people who nobody reads. It's not as if the famous people aren't entertaining or interesting, it's just that they are members of the club that supports one another, and either don't recognize their own douche in support of that club, or they do it intentionally for financial reasons.

Every time I come across something John Green has said, I get excited, inspired, and wish I'd said it myself.

Oh for fuck's sake.

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